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Caryn Hartglass, Thoughts for the New Year 2017

January 3, 2017

Caryn will give some inspiring thoughts for 2017 with tips to keep on track with your goals.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Caryn Hartglass: Hi, everybody. I’m Caryn Hartglass, and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. It’s a new year, 2017. Happy New Year.

I wanted to start talking about the New Year and planning for the New Year: promises, goals you make. Things we want to change, things we want to make better. The first thing that I want to say, something that I have learned from my guides. I like to think that I have guides and sometimes I hear them say things to me. I’m in the “woo-woo, wa-wa” space now. [chuckles]

When I was getting ready for my third surgery ten years ago for advanced ovarian cancer, my surgery was scheduled for twelve o’clock and it was running late. A friend of mine would say that he would ask his guides to be with me during that time. I never really thought about having guides so I borrowed someone else’s guides. [chuckles] But I was thinking there thinking, “Oh goodness, my surgery is late and these guides have things to do.” So I thought to myself, “I’m sorry the surgery is late and I’m holding you here. I hope we get to you soon.” What came back was this: “There is no time.” The message that I received was, “There is no time.” Since then, I’ve tried to digest that concept; it’s kind of hard for me to get around it. In some ways, I get it.

But here we are: it’s a new year. There are signs that there is a cycle of life, certainly with seasons and the way our planet travels around the sun. We can mark those cycles as we do—with days, years, hours, minutes, seconds, microseconds—and stress ourselves out as result, thinking that we don’t we enough time in the day. I like to think that there is no time and I do what I choose to do when I do it. It’s an ongoing struggle, but something for you to think about. Think about: there is no time.

Now, I’m going to be talking about the New Year and things to do to get ready for changes you may want to make. Some inspiring stories, those sorts of things. You’re welcome to join me during this hour at 1(888) 874-4888 here at the Progressive Radio Network. I would love to hear from you. Of course, I’m still at the same email address: info@realmeals.org. So you can contact me there.

The thing that I’ve noticed more than ever—I noticed it inside of the vegan community, but now with the larger community with politics—that there’s so much polarization going on. People are gravitating to sides. I remember when I was young and when I went to camp. We always had the red team and the blue team, the color wars. As adults, we’re having those same color wars here in the United States. We have the blue team and the red team. It’s getting very, very polarized. Everyone’s very sensitive. We just went through a series of holidays, and I’ve heard numerous stories of people sitting with their families who disagree on the current state of the United States federal government and where it’s going.

Polarization is not a good thing. It’s something that we need to be mindful of if we find ourselves with our hair coming up on end at the mention of certain people’s names or certain subjects. It’s really hard to be objective and it takes energy.

I’m recognizing that this is not unlike my journey as a vegan, where we take sides: the vegans versus the omnivores—or as some people call themselves, the carnivores. People seem to like having an identity and want to have an identity. I think it’s good to feel grounded in your belief system (who you are), but identifying with a larger group—if you need that, you need to recognize that you need that.

I am a vegan and I say that I’m a vegan, but what I really mean is I believe in a vegan principle. Because myself: who am I? I’m just a human on this planet who happens to choose certain principles and that means not killing animals for food, and doing the best that I can to prevent exploitation in order for me to live the life that I lead. So that’s a lifestyle that I choose. I say that I am vegan because I am not ashamed to use the word and I want to stress the importance of it. But perhaps I should be more careful with how I use it and say that I more follow a vegan philosophy. Because me, I’m just Caryn Hartglass. [chuckles] I’m just this person traveling on the earth for a short amount of time. I choose to follow a certain philosophy.

When we get angry because people aren’t on our “team”—they’re not on our side—it can really impact how we think. How we feel, this “right” and “wrong” concept. You know, I’m sharing this now and I struggle with myself. The political atmosphere is pointing it out, giving me a little bit more clarity that it happens on so many levels everywhere—this polarization.

I’m going to try this year to be a little less polarized. It’s all about being more compassionate, understanding, and non-judgmental. But at the same time, we still need to fight! We still need to fight to make things better.

There was a really inspiring story that just came out on The New York Times. Maybe you saw it, maybe you heard about it. It’s an inspiring story about weight loss and its aftermath. We’re going to be talking about weight and weight loss because it’s the New Year and everybody talks about it. There are some things that we can discuss that are worthwhile.

But this is a story about the Brooklyn Borough President Erin Adams. Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York; I live in New York City. He was overweight; he had abdominal pain; he had Type II diabetes. He was not doing well at all. 56 years old, the former police captain. He went on a vegan diet, started exercising, and preparing his own meals. Right now, he’s lost about 30 pounds, completely reversed his diabetes and a number of other issues. And he’s feeling great.

What I find exciting about this—I’m hoping that I can bring him on the program because he is someone in my neighborhood—we need more people in politics who are realizing the benefits of a plant-based diet. Just like Cory Booker who is another vegan politician on our side [chuckles] and an awesome guy. So this is really inspiring. While we’re kind of reeling about what’s going to happen in government, there are people on a local level, on a bigger level that are finding the benefits of a plant-based diet. From there, it can only get better.

So is there a way that we can open the door to more people experiencing the benefits of healthy food? That’s what we do here on It’s All About Food and at my non-profit Responsible Eating and Living.

Now, it’s the New Year and a lot of people—especially after the November elections and everything that’s been going on in the news, all this polarization, “I’m right, you’re wrong” and that kind of thing—aren’t feeling good. We’re feeling frustrated, depressed, scared. A lot of people tell me they’re scared. Again, in some ways, I feel as an activist all these years, I’ve always felt like I was on the “other side”: not the side of the general public, not the side of the mainstream, not the side of where everyone was going. In some ways, I’m kind of used to this feeling and that’s not going to stop me from fighting what I believe is important.

But feeling depressed, feeling frustrated, feeling not in power is not a good thing. I was reminded of this audio presentation by Dr. Bruce Lipton called Wisdom of Your Cells. Have you heard of it? I recommend this one for people who are going through cancer to listen to this particular tape. I think it’s eight hours; it’s long, it’s on the expensive side, but I’m sure that you can listen to parts of it if not all of it on YouTube. Wisdom of Your Cells. What he told us basically—in eight hours with lots of biology interspersed to make it sound scientific and legitimate—our cells, our fifty to a hundred trillion cells in our bodies, respond to the environment that they’ve perceived. I always found that profound.

When we’re in a health crisis, part of what can be causing difficulty—in addition to our toxic environment, the unhealthy foods that we may eat, and other factors—we can be giving ourselves wrong signals. The signals that we don’t want to live or the signals that we’re doomed. That’s not good. It’s important to be mindful about what we’re thinking about all the time and give your bodies and yourself a positive spin on things. You’ll feel better. I was also thinking that that applies to our general wellbeing in terms of how we feel on a regular basis. People are starting feel frustrated, not empowered, depressed.

I want to give you an example. There are times when you just feel amazing. Things are going right, you’ve been working out, you’re losing some weight. Or maybe your job’s going really well or you’ve met someone you really like. You’re just feeling good. Or maybe you just woke up on the right side of the bed and things feel really good. And then you get some bad news or somebody says something that isn’t very nice to you. Just like that, your mood is completely different. 180 degrees opposite: you’re feeling terrible and feeling lingers. Nothing has changed, really. Nothing’s changed; the world’s still going along as it is. You still have the same bills to pay, you’re still are in the same situation. You just went from feeling fabulous to miserable in a split second.

It reminds me that we have control over the way we feel. I’m kind of extending Bruce Lipton’s words that our internal cells responds to the environments that we perceive and we respond to the environment that we perceive externally in terms of our moods and emotions.

So a lot of things are going on in our world that aren’t pleasant, but things have been going on the world ever since we have had an understanding of when the world started that hasn’t been pleasant. There are all kinds of horrible things going on in the world. They just seem, to some of us, to be more intense these days and it’s affecting our mood.

What I want to say is do whatever you can to make this world a better place. In your own community, in your own home, in your own life—however you can do that. But also take the energy to focus on the things that make you feel good. Because it doesn’t feel good to not feel good. Now, that may sound really dumb or really profound, [chuckles] but life is better when you feel good. Just the way how someone or some event can change your mood from good to bad or bad to good…

I remember when I would audition for a role or compete in a vocal competition. If I learned I got the phone call that I got the role, all of a sudden, wow! My mood! I was so happy, I was soaring. Or when I won a contest, wow! Just like that. Nothing really changed—yeah, I was given an opportunity—but the world didn’t change, things stayed the same.

There are things that we can do with ourselves to have a little more control on our moods. When we can control them externally how we feel and give the right messages to ourselves, our health is going to be better. Our mental health is going to be better. Everything’s better. Then we can really be fantastic activists and get on with the work to make this world a little, little, bit better.

I’m sure a lot of people have heard of the law of attraction, the book, and the secret behind that. If we feel positive and we imagine what we want and feel ourselves in a situation of having what we want, we will attract. There’s been a lot of discussion on this, but there’s actually some science on it and perhaps you’ve heard about it. The law of attraction has officially been debunked. Now, I don’t know if everybody knows that. If you’ve been finding some success with that, that’s great. But there have been some studies that have showed that just thinking positive, willing something, writing a fake check with the money that you want to receive or whatever—that doesn’t work.

But there is something that does work, and that’s what I want to talk about because it really applies I think to starting a new year, starting with new goals, dreams, and challenges. There’s one group that’s given it a name. They call it WOOP (w-o-o-p): Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. I think it’s kind of common sense, but it’s effective.

I talk about changing diet and eating more plant food, and the thing that really helps is planning and organization. But that can be really hard for people. So there are different methods, and WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) is one method designed to help you achieve your goal rather than just wishing for it to happen.

Wishing is the first step of this plan. There was a book that came out a couple of years ago that this was based on by Gabriele Oettingen called Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. The idea is this four-step thing: wish, outcome, obstacle, plan. You wish for something, you imagine the outcome. But here’s the thing: what are the obstacles? Sometimes the obstacles can be so great for something that you want. What WOOP suggest is narrow it down to one obstacle and then you can come up with all kinds of plans to get through that obstacle, so that you can achieve your wish. It requires work, it requires thought. But the studies have shown that it’s effective, far more effective than just wishing.

Just reminded me of when I was in college and we were learning how to solve problems. You basically had to define your problem and I’m thinking that the problem could also be a wish. Then you think about what the possible solutions are; you evaluate your alternatives. Then you take a particular path.

The WOOP concept actually has an app that you can get online for free. Just Google WOOP—it’s so much fun to say, isn’t it? Woop, woop!—Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. It may help you, I don’t know. That’s a tip for some of you who may be wanting something and maybe the law of attraction wasn’t quite doing it for you. The WOOP may help you.

I learned about the WOOP from Dr. Susan Thompson. I interviewed her a couple of years ago and she has since founded Bright Line Eating. Perhaps you know about her, perhaps you’ve taken her boot camp. She is a weight-loss expert.

Here we are, it’s New Year’s. People have New Year’s resolutions and a big New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, change the diet. I can only speak from my own personal experience and my own personal reading and research about food, and what works and what doesn’t work. But I’ll confess to you: I’m a very disciplined person. If I want to do something, I kind of do the WOOP [chuckles]. I wish for it and then I figure out what I need to do in order to accomplish it. When it comes to weight, I’ve personally never had a serious weight problem. I’ve pretty much been the same weight all of my adult life.

Susan Thompson has a whole another story. Her program Bright Line Eating is based on her own experiences. She’s been through all kinds of twelve-steps programs and she realized that she had an addiction to white flour and sugar. She has come up with a test or quiz where you can actually quantify your susceptibility level, as she calls it.

I had the opportunity to take advantage of her program and see what it was all about because I had been promoting it after speaking with her and interviewing her. I was happy to actually see what it was all about. I’m telling you this because there’s going to be a new boot camp starting—this is kind of like a secret heads-up. We’re going to be starting to talk about it in a couple of days. If you want to know more about it, go to responsibleeatingandliving.com/ in a day or so and you can find out more about the Bright Line Eating program that’s coming up. It’s been an expensive program, and I believe the costs are going to be reduced this time for this new program to make it more available for more people.

What I want to say is that it’s not a program for me. But I am not a person who’s addicted to food. If I decide to do something, like I said, I pretty much stick to my plan. But there are people who cannot and find dieting so frustrating, and that they never, ever work.

I come from a background of believing in Dr. Fuhrman’s plan, which is learning about greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, nuts, and seeds. Learning about the foods that you can eat as much as you want: greens, the non-starchy vegetables, berries, beans. I find that really fun and liberating.

But perhaps for some people that’s not enough. Susan has a plan. It’s very specific and for someone like me, I find it very rigid. For some people who have really, really struggled, it’s a plan. If you stick with the plan and just commit to it, you will definitely have success in losing weight.

There’s a wide range of things to do when you want to lose weight, and the thing is that you really have to go deep. Decide who you are and what you think are the causes of your eating issues. There are so many plans out there, there is something for you.

The key is changing your ear. This can be done with planned behavioral changes. Things like committing every day to journaling. Some people do it at night, some people do at day. Writing down what you’ve done, foods you’ve eaten, issues you’ve had.

It’s funny because I’ve never really been a journaler, but a couple years ago I started my What Vegans Eat blog. I realized recently it’s a journal. I’ve been journaling what I eat every day for almost two years, and I’ve learned so much from it. It’s really great to have that resource to go back to, to remember some things. I think it’s great.

So whether you’re doing a public blog or a private blog, journaling can really be beneficial. Especially in helping you recognize behavior and changing behavior. That’s just one step where you’re actually putting energy in to make a change.

There are other programs out there, right around now. You may remember a couple years ago, I think I interviewed the people behind Veganuary. That’s a month pledge where you go vegan in January. So if you go to veganuary.com and check that out. They give you all kinds of tips, tools, and support. Things to help you along the way.

There’s a new one too going on, there are so many of them. You can check them all out. But everybody’s got a plan. There are many plants that are free, some cost money. The bottom line is, if you really want to make a change, it’s up to you.

The other one that I wanted to mention is Rip Esselstyn. He has a new book coming out, and it’s called The Engine 2 7 Day Rescue Challenge. He’s also doing a 7 Day Rescue Challenge, and I believe it starts tomorrow. You can sign up at Engine 2 (the number “two”) at engine2diet.com. Find out more about the 7-Day Rescue Challenge. It’s free.

It’s just another way to give you a kick in the butt to make the changes you really deserve. That you really want to do for yourself. Right?

Transcribed by HT, 1/6/2017

There are lots of them out there. I know PCRM has a program. I don’t know if it starts in January, but these are the particular ones that I know that are going on in January. Now, all of these different plans, they help you plan. It’s a plan that helps you plan! Goodness, I need more words in my vocabulary, but it’s a program that helps you plan. And very often, when I am coaching people or helping people move to a plant-based diet, one of the things I recommend –

and it’s not rocket science. A lot of people recommend this, especially for people that have a regular job and are going to work five days a week or whatever your schedule may be – to take one of your days off and use it to prepare a lot of foods for the week. So that means you can make a big pot of grains, whole grains, a big pot of beans, perhaps prepare some of your sauces and dressings. Some of them may only last for three or four days, so you may have to do this twice a week, but there are all kinds of tricks. Once you’re into the routine of it, the habit of it, you can come up with your own that really help you.

Here, at Responsible Eating and Living headquarters in our home, Gary and I like to cook. We work from home, so we don’t necessarily have to do that, make a lot of stuff and then have it because we come home tired from work. We’re working all day. We’re tired all day. No, we’re not. But we don’t have a problem with preparing food. The reason why I brought this up is because in our kitchen – we live in an apartment building, and something happened with the pipe that brings the water up to our kitchen. We’re on the third floor, and something’s going on that isn’t very good with the pipe down in the basement. They started doing some repairs a few days ago and rushed into our apartment and said you have to turn off all the water in the kitchen. Fortunately, we had water in the bathroom, but not in the kitchen, and when you live in the kitchen like we do, preparing foods and making food shows and creating recipes and talking about food, not having water is really a challenge. But we got through it. I was very grateful to have a bathroom. We set things up in the tub with buckets of things to make it manageable for cleaning our pots and pans. It wasn’t pleasant, but still grateful for water somewhere. Then they brought the water back on. It was a temporary fix because they realized they needed to do a lot more, and today they turned the water off again, but I was prepared. A couple of days ago, knowing that we weren’t going to have water – actually it two days ago, first day of January – I prepared a ton of food! I made beans, I made one of our favorite whole grain mixes, which is brown rice with black rice and red rice mixed together. I prepared celery sticks and carrot sticks and chopped onions. There is a tip – maybe you know this – you can chop celery, carrots, and onions, and other kinds of crudités like red peppers, and store them in a container in the refrigerator filled with water. This will keep them crispy and fresh and lovely, so I did that. We had a container with celery sticks, a container with carrot sticks, a container with onions. What else did I make? I steamed some cauliflower, and I cleaned some kale and wrapped the leaves in a towel. I cleaned some romaine leaves and wrapped them in a towel. Now food preparation is really easy for the next few days because of all this work that I did. It really didn’t take a long time, and now I’m really appreciating the gift that I gave myself. Nice, huh? That just reminded me that this tip that I recommend to other people that I don’t always follow is really useful, and I might actually get into the routine of doing this more often because it’s so nice. It’s just so nice to have these things ready to go all the time. For example, just before this program started, we had a big miso vegetable soup and in it went the red cabbage that I had grated in advance, the red onions that I had chopped, along with a little miso and – Gary made it so I’m not sure exactly what else he put in there, but it was really good.

Now back to – I just wanted to mention a very useful thing to have in the kitchen. I’m calling this the sieve story. That’s S-I-E-V-E, a sieve. There are many different kinds, but we have a couple of them where they’re like a bowl with a fine stainless steel mesh. Very useful to have. I was recommending it for someone the other day who wanted to know about rinsing quinoa. Some quinoas today don’t recommend rinsing because the ones that come in a box are actually prewashed, but I still think it’s a good idea to rinse quinoa and remove that saponin, this residue that’s on the grain, the pseudo-grain that gives it a bitter flavor. I like to rinse it, but because those little quinoa seeds are so tiny, you need to rinse them in a fine mesh sieve. Okay, that fine mesh sieve just came in really handy when we were washing dishes in the bathroom because you don’t want to clog your drain in the bathroom with leftover food. Even though we would scrape the plates, there’s always some stuff. Gary came up with this idea of washing the dishes on top of the sieve, and the sieve would collect the food and then it would go down the drain. Get your sieves, everybody! They’re really, really useful. Another thing I use sieves for – I have them in all different sizes, big bowls, and then we have these little baskets that are actually used for tea – making tea. These tea baskets, fine mesh sieves that you can put in a teapot.

I am back to sprouting. When the winter comes, I like to sprout. I feel like this is my time, not that I’m really big on gardening during the warm weather. I would like to be, but I only have a terrace here in New York, and we’ve been traveling a lot, so it’s really hard to keep any kind of plants. But the winter comes, and I like to sprout. Now years ago – I think it was actually five years ago – I interviewed Steve Meyerowitz the Sproutman, and I interviewed him a couple of times after that. I have to say unfortunately last year – maybe it was a little more than a year ago – he was killed in a car accident. It was very sad. Back in 2011 when I was talking with him, he recommended the Tribest Sprouter. It’s an interesting setup where you put your sprouting feed, it’s on a tray, and it gets watered all day. You put a certain amount of water in the bottom, and it gets fed up through a stick, and then it gets sprayed over the top. So the sprouts are continually being gently moistened with a light spray of water. It really helps them grow lovely, tall, strong. It’s fun to watch them grow. That’s one of the reasons why I like to make the sprouts, especially in this Tribest Sprouter. Now one of the things I don’t like about the Tribest Sprouter – it is made of plastic, and I’ve really tried to reduce the amount of plastic in my life, but I’m not cooking with it. It doesn’t get hot, so I’m not that concerned about it. A few years ago, maybe three or four years ago, I hadn’t had this sprouter for too long. It stopped working, and I cleaned it, and I was trying to figure out how to fix it. It was really frustrating me, and I just put it away. ‘Oh, gosh. I’ll deal with this another time.’ I kept having in the back of my mind that I would email Steve Meyerowitz the Sproutman about it and ask him what he might recommend. Then unfortunately he died, so I couldn’t ask him.

Just recently – you may remember this, and I’m going to get back to this in a minute – I started a detoxing of my apartment, removing things that are wasteful that I don’t need, trying to make the space more pleasant for living. I was clearing out some cabinets and deciding what things would go, and the sprouter showed its face to me, and then I thought, ‘Okay, there’s the sprouter. What am I going to do with it?’ The other day, I started it up again, and it worked! And I realized I think I know what happened. It’s easy for these little seeds sometimes to get stuck in places, and I have a feeling a bunch of seeds got stuck here and there, but then letting it dry out for a really, really long time, those seeds disintegrated. They dried up, crinkled, gone, and now everything’s working now. If it happens again, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do other than let it really dry out. Maybe I’ll be able to clean it.

I’ve been really happy to make my sprouts again, and I have decided to name my Tribest Sprouter Steve, after Steve Meyerowitz. You may know that I name some of my appliances after people that I care about that have passed. We have a Breville tea maker that I received not too long ago from my cousin, and his wife had bought it. She had passed, and so we named it after her. I like to do that. These simple little things help keep people alive in my life, in more ways than one.

Yeah, so I’m sprouting. Now I have a lot of sprout seeds that I bought a long time ago. They don’t last forever, so I’m trying to figure out which are the ones that are still good and which of the ones that aren’t so good. My very favorite sprouts are sunflower sprouts, and I can’t wait to start sprouting them again because they are the most delicious, they are the most fun to grow, they’re beautiful. That’s my message to you. Sprouting sunflower sprouts. I’ve been able to sprout things like clover sprouts and alfalfa sprouts just by wetting them and keeping them in a little jar. Sunflower sprouts are different and many people find – the ones that sprout them – they have to use dirt and grow them in dirt, but they sprout very nicely in a Tribest Sprouter. I’m not selling Tribest Sprouters, folks. I’m just sharing my experience and telling you what are the advantages and disadvantages, but it is something that I’m glad is up and running again because it’s fun.

This is all related to water actually. When this water thing happened in our kitchen, I actually had to harvest my sprouts sooner than I had wanted because it was going to be really inconvenient to bring the sprouter over to the bathroom and fill it up with fresh water every day. Water is so important. You know how much I love water. The first thing that’s the most important for life is breathing. That reminds me, let’s take a nice breath. The next most important thing is water, and my heart is so in pain when I read about what’s going on in Flint. Their water crisis continues, and it’s been so long to get things done. It just shows you, just exposes, so many problems that we have at a state level, at a regional level, at a federal level, with government. There’s only so much you can do, which is why – not everyone can do this – but if you can I really recommend getting some sort of treatment at the source for your own tap water. Hopefully, what happened in Flint is not going to happen in your town, but there are things that happen in our water system all the time, and many times we’re not even made aware of the leaks and spills that pass through and then maybe go away. That’s why I use a water distiller. I think it’s important to prioritize what things are important in life and maybe as, with the New Year starting, you might think about what are the things that you really need, really need. We are constantly taught in this society to consume, consume, consume, and consuming is fine when it comes to healthy, whole, plant foods. That’s great! But all the other things out there that we are constantly marketed about to buy – do we really need those things? I live pretty simply, and there are some things that are really important to me, and those things I buy with quality. My water distiller, my AquaNui water distiller, is one of those things, and we talk about going to the well every day where we rinse out the distiller and fill it up again and make our water. It’s a ritual that I think it’s so important, and some people might find it tedious or whatever. I’m just really glad that I’m able to do this. If you want to find more about water distillers, you can go to ResponsibleEatingAndLiving.com, click on the link that we have on the page there. You can email me anytime if you have questions. I know everything’s so confusing out there. I’m at info@realmeals.org. You can ask me questions, and I will do my very best to answer them.

Speaking of things being confusing, I was talking earlier about how everything is so polarized. Occasionally, I will go to an article that is very, very conservative, very, very red, very right-wing, alt-right, all those words that I find kind of unpleasant. I attempt to read some of these articles. They look good, and I can see how many people might be convinced about the argument that’s being presented, but at the same time, I get all kinds of chills thinking that people can think a certain way that is different than the way I think. This polarization thing comes up, and for someone who is uncertain of what’s going on, they may be swayed one way and then swayed another way and then get really confused. I know I’ve seen it with all of the arguments about food. At least for me, I know that I can find credible scientific reports that support the science that I believe in and can debunk the food articles that say things that I think are ridiculous. It’s a little harder for me with other issues that I’m not an expert in, and that’s where I can kind of relate and empathize with people feeling overwhelmed. It is really overwhelming out there.

Okay, a few more things. Number one, I was recently interviewed by Bex Kvasnik. Bex Kvasnik, she has a podcast that she calls Jewbalations. And yes, that’s J-E-W, Jewbalations. She talks about things from a Jewish perspective, and she interviewed me a couple of weeks ago. It was fun actually, being on the other side answering someone’s questions. If you’re curious about that, you can find a link to that interview. It’s on the Responsible Eating and Living website. Scroll down there on the right-hand side. You can find it there. I thought it was fun to listen to. I just wanted you to know about that.

We were kind of on the road over New Year’s. We’re invited every year to a little town of Bethlehem. The little town of Bethlehem. The little town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. An old friend of mine has an annual New Year’s Eve party. We’ve been there a few times, and it’s really a fun thing to do. The trip is maybe two hours by car. It’s not a big deal, but we always like to prepare travel food. Plus, we’re never quite sure when we go the party if there’s going to be much food for us. So one of the things that I did New Year’s Eve, December 31st, was I made my favorite baked potato pancake recipe. Have you tried it? Raise your hand. I love this recipe. Even if you love your deep-fried potato pancakes, you don’t have to be Jewish. Any person can like potato pancakes. I personally prefer them baked and not fried, and I made the recipe. It was really quick, and it was actually faster than normal because normally I manually grate my potatoes and onions. It’s just kind of a tradition to do it manually, but I used my processor. It was done so quickly. I made a big batch. We had some for breakfast and brought the rest on the road. Perfect travel food. That’s why I wanted to bring it up. If you know you’re going to be traveling or flying or going somewhere and not sure about the food along the way or you just want to be prepared, this is a great recipe and it doesn’t really need to be refrigerated. There’s nothing really in them that’s going to go bad. Plus, it was December, so the car was cold. What a great travel food. And yes, the recipe and the food show video are at ResponsibleEatingAndLiving.com.

Now Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where we went for this party, is the home of Vegan Treats. This is a wonderful bakery if you want to really go crazy with all kinds of decadent baked goods, all sizes, shapes, flavors, with different levels of gooiness and fluff. They’re all there at Vegan Treats. They are on the sweet side, and if you’re not used to having very sweet treats, it’s going to be overly sweet. Really fun that they exist. They’re in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and that surprises me. I suppose they’re there because it’s an affordable place to produce food and still be able to truck your product to some of the big cities like Philadelphia and New York City. We stopped at a number of places in Bethlehem over the New Year’s weekend. I really felt like I was decades behind the times unfortunately, and I was caught off guard. We went into a little deli place New Year’s Day and wanted to get some food. I was happy to find out that the cashier was vegan. That was nice, and that they had almond milk for our tea, but I wasn’t really thinking, and I ordered a salad with roasted vegetables. I was looking at all of the vegetables behind the counter, and it seemed safe enough. What I didn’t realize was they were going to heat up some of the vegetables and use some sort of animal grease. I was served this food and bit into one of the roasted peppers and, for someone who hasn’t eaten animal flesh for four decades or longer, it’s a very jarring, unpleasant experience. I didn’t eat more than a couple of bites, but it left me with a sour stomach for a long time. My microbiome did not know what to do with that stuff. Fortunately, I was able to bring it back, and they made me a new salad with the raw vegetables, but I was just annoyed at myself that I let that happen. I was a little too trusting, left my guard down. I didn’t really want to be so picky like, “Do you cook the vegetables in animal fat? How do you do that?” I just wanted to order something simple, but that’s what happens. Fortunately, it was all resolved and all that ends well. All’s well that ends well, right? All is well that ends well.

And, just like this program, all is well that ends well, we’re going to end in a couple of minutes. This is 2017 and I want to remind you that anytime you have a food question, here’s where you can go to ask it: info@realmeals.org. This is what I do. I am passionate about food. I am passionate about helping people find a healthier place in life. If you’re struggling or you just have a general question, you can ask me: info@realmeals.org. I am here for you and will do what I can to answer your question. Just going out, I want to give you a delicious recipe. I mentioned before that I like to make – when I make grains, I have a favorite mix, which is brown rice, black rice, and red rice. We have a Healthy World Burger that’s made from this base of brown rice, red rice, and black rice and millet. We like to mix millet in there, too. We made a meatloaf, and the recipe is at ResponsibleEatingAndLiving.com. I want to say it is amazing. It is not hard to make, and it’s just – what’s amazing is it’s so good and all the ingredients are good for you. How can that be? How can that be? I’ll tell you how it could be. That’s our message here at Responsible Eating and Living. That’s my message here on Progressive Radio Network’s It’s All About Food, finding the deliciousness in your food, the food that’s going to nourish you all year long. I wish you well with your 2017 goals. I’m here for you when it comes to food. Join me at ResponsibleEatingAndLiving.com, and have a delicious week, folks. I’m Caryn Hartglass. You’ve been listening to It’s All About Food. Yes, have a delicious week! Bye-bye.